Riseup, a tech collective that provides security-minded communications to activists worldwide, sounded the alarm last month when a judge in Spain stated that the use of their email service is a practice, he believes, associated with terrorism.

All too often bills are proposed and laws are passed in the United States that are in grave violation of the United States' obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. And all too rarely does U.S. domestic policy get spoken about in terms of human rights laws. A case in point: the recent spate of bills responding to the unlawful mass surveillance conducted by the NSA revealed in the flood of disclosures from whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The NSA's actions are fundamentally at odds with the human rights to privacy, free expression, freedom of information, as well as the basic right to assemble and organize for change. Yet none of the current Congressional legislative proposals, or the expected legislation to be sponsored by President Obama, are good enough to fully comply with the United States' human rights obligations.